April Fool’s Day turned into April Celebration day. We’ll never forget this day with Cory Booker speaking over 25 hours for freedom, and Judge Susan Crawford soundly defeating Musk’s attempt to buy an essential election.
This is a photo of The Flame of Liberty memorial in Los Gatos, CA. It is dedicated to U.S. military service members, first responders, and the two local 9/11 heroes, Todd Beamer and Mark Bingham, who were “Killed In Action” during the events of 9/11.
The memorial incorporates symbols like the Statue of Liberty’s torch, an eternal flame, and a soldier’s cross, representing freedom, remembrance, and sacrifice.
Today we drove north along 85 and 280 with rainbows leading and arching over our way.
Yesterday we attended a Little League game of five year olds. What a treat!Amazingly the children improved in the three innings, as they began to understand running when you hit the ball and running around to four bases. The coaches on both teams were the epitome of patience, and it was a respite from the news as children learned teamwork, cooperation, and sportsmanship. Quite fun, and a reset for my system.
We, our body-minds, have no straight lines. Everything spirals.
The political system is currently spiraling out of control. It’s time to bring it back into an alignment that spirals and rounds in unity and connection to benefit all, the wholeness we share.
John McWhorter: The Trump administration’s list of words that are now unwelcome in government and government-funded documents — such as “trans,” “privilege” and “female” (?!) — also includes the word “pronoun.”
Simon Rosenberg: Trump is now, clearly, a mad, early stage tyrant, and is doing extraordinary harm to the American people and our country every day. With students disappearing from our streets, legal residents ending up in foreign prisons, universities and law firms being terrorized, alliances being torched and our government being systemically, illegally and unconstitutionally dismantled, there is great urgency now for the pro-democracy forces in the country to rise up and find more effective ways to challenge him and stop his rancid efforts to turn the US into Russia and to turn us from a free people to cowering subjects gratefully kneeling before a Mad King.
Beauty in nature – a rock tenderly topped with the leaves of a plantSunlight points and curves the way
I keep thinking of the Danish tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. It took a child to point out: “The emperor has no clothes.” And now, the emperor is being exposed, is seen as having no clothes or agenda, other than himself, as his cloak unwinds and dissipates, exposing deceit, incompetence, ignorance, greed, and lies.
The weather just dropped over 20 degrees today and the wind is a vigorous howl. I sense Mary Poppins landing down with her umbrella bringing with her a spoonful of sugar, and common sense.
Sculpture at the Albany Bulb, formerly a construction debris landfill.The four directions honored at the Albany BulbA tree stump transformed into a place to rest with support!
Ron Charles writes this in his weekly column in The Washington Post today.
In his 2006 biography of Andrew Carnegie, David Nasaw notes that the fabulously wealthy industrialist “would live his final years in disappointment that he had not met his lifelong goal of giving away all his money.”
It wasn’t for lack of trying. At the start of the 20th century, Carnegie was building two libraries a week. In 1903, he doubled that pace. Before he died in 1919, he’d given away money for the construction of more than 2,500 libraries.
Last Friday night, Donald Trump fired off another havoc-wreaking executive order. Among other things, this one calls for gutting the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
Every year, that little-known agency supports America’s museums and libraries with grants totaling about $266 million, which is close to what Elon Musk spent to put Trump back in the White House.
Charles goes on and concludes with this:
Yesterday, Trump replaced acting IMLS director Cyndee Landrum — an actual librarian — with Deputy Secretary of Labor Keith E. Sonderling, a former employment lawyer. Sonderling immediately laced up his jackboots and issued a statement that says, in part: “I am committed to steering this organization in lockstep with this Administration to enhance efficiency and foster innovation. We will revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.”
Anybody who’s marching in lockstep with a political ideology needs to spend more free time in a well-funded library.
“There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment. The time is always now.”
James Baldwin
View from the Albany “bulb”What do you see? And feel?Nature and Art
If Trump gets the GOP spending bill passed, it’s on all of us. We have to take the risk.
I’m with the words of Paul Valery:
One might be light like the bird, not like the feather.
A feather has weight. We feel the force of gravity when we hold it in our hand. Each feather, each individual, has weight, and when feathers and people come together, there is flight, flight that enables us to see the whole picture and fight, and we are, and we will continue until the insanity ends, and we are again a country of which we can be proud.
Nick Flynn: Every few years I was able to sit with Thich Nhat Hanh for week-long retreats. A bell would ring throughout the day, and we were to stop whatever it was we were doing, and simply breathe. We were also to breathe three times—slowly, mindfully—before we turned on a faucet or a light switch. At first this felt nearly impossible. I simply wanted to wash my hands, or for the light to go on. By the end of the week I stood breathing before the faucet. When the water came I nearly wept…
I read Robert Hubbell. Out of so much that is staggering I choose one thing on which to focus.
Trump is acting like a raving madman. He continues to lobby for the hostile takeover of Canada, and the media pretends it does not hear an idea so lunatic that any other president uttering the idea would be removed from office under the 25th Amendment within hours.
As I struggle to understand how we’re allowing a used-car salesman to promote a car on the White House lawn, I read this:
Naomi Shihab Nye:
“Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”
I breathe fully there.
Part of Golden Gate Bridge seen from Sutro BathsEmbraceShapes
Elon Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.
Hannah Arendt: The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.
In order to understand, Arendt wrote The Banality of Evil, about what led to the holocaust. She learned that when one looks at numbers rather than consequences in the way that Eichmann did when he was proud to view how many people could be murdered in a day, we see the consequences.
Eichmann’s behavior is like that of Musk who is looking at numbers, and is not concerned with consequences.
The Dalai Lama: Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
Cathy's Blog! 